THE MUMBAI THINKTANK: (From lef) O&M's Piyush Pandey, Midday's Tariq Ansari, moderator Suhel Seth, ACN-ORG-MARG's Titoo Ahluwalia, Philips' Rajeev Karwal, and Euro RSCG's Ishan Raina

Toughie, that question. So, in time-honoured journalistic fashion of getting someone else to do all the dirty work, BT got now-established Crossfire moderator Suhel Seth-his day job is as CEO of Equus Redcell-to pitch it at five marketing heavyweights at the BT Crossfire 2002 held in Mumbai on August 2. The worthies: Piyush Pandey, Group President & National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather; Tariq Ansari, Managing Director, Midday Multimedia; K.M.S. Titoo Ahluwalia, Chairman, ACN-ORG-MARG; Rajeev Karwal, Senior Vice-President, Philips India; and Ishan Raina, CEO, Euro-RSCG India.

The evening saw a flurry of respectable jabs, even some upper cuts-Pandey scored the most-and in a little over a hour, we had our surprise answer-one that could very well save us the trouble of researching topics for next year's Crossfire. The conclusion: Do Indian advertisers and marketers understand research? And here's how we got to it.

PIYUSH PANDEY Group President, O&M I'm an immense trier of research for the past 20 years. New techniques kept coming up and I've given them all a shot.

TARIQ ANSARI MD, Midday Multimedia I think Indian advertisers have, for too long, been creating advertising for their own wives.

SUHEL SETH CEO, Equus Redcell Is advertising sometimes comprosiming on understanding because the marketer is keen on calling the shots?

Suhel Seth: Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. Has Indian advertising invested enough in understanding the Indian consumer? It's a big question. I think the more important issue is when you say 'invest', what do you mean by 'invest'? Is research the only mechanism of understanding the Indian consumer? I've often believed in long conversations with the gwala and the dhobi and just observing the way people shop and people buy. We'll start the evening without further ado. May I ask Piyush to kick of?

Piyush Pandey: Well I believe advertising has over-invested in trying to understand the Indian consumer. If they'd put in this kind of money on finding out the cure for aids, they would have found it by now.

A very famous multinational told me "this will not be understood by Geeta from Gorakhpur because our research says so". I said, "What does Geeta from Gorakhpur read?"

There were some magazines like Sarita, Grih Shobha, Grih Lakshmi that had articles titled-I'll read out some to you, and this (according to the research) is supposed to be a very coy woman whom we have be very nice to-Punde pujaari kaise zahar gholte hain dampatya mein (How priests can poison a blissful marital relation), Zaroori hai sone ke pehle sex (Sex is a must before sleep).'

Seth: Rajeev, 'Let's make things better' is a continuing aspiration of Geeta from Gorakhpur. Comments.

Rajeev Karwal: I think (the topic should be) whether Indian marketers have understood the Indian customer, and whether investing in expensive research is the way to do it. I believe that every answer lies in the marketplace. If marketers and agencies see the consumer in actual conditions, they'll gain an intuitive understanding of the way she behaves.

Yes, research is useful-if the respondent and the person asking the question are on the same wavelength.

Tariq Ansari: The question is-has Indian advertising invested enough in understanding the Indian consumer? My answer to the question is no. I think there are three big blocks. I think Indian advertisers have, for too long, been creating advertising for their own wives. The point is it's not about your wife. It's about some other guy's wife.

TITOO AHLUWALIA Chairman, ACN-ORG-MARG There is a job for the researchers to do, which is too tell the advertising people that research has changed.

RAJEEV KARWAL Senior VP, Philips India If marketers and agencies see the consumer in actual conditions, they'll gain an intuitive understanding of the way he behaves.

ISHAN RAINA CEO, Euro RSCG We do invest in research but the question is are we investing right rather than are we investing enough.

Second one is a slightly more complex point. This whole idea of the medium being the message was easy to handle when there was a paucity of media options. All you needed to do was make sure the medium understood the consumer. And if the medium reached a large number of people then the medium understood the consumer. Now, you've got multiple media, and each medium reaches the consumer slightly differently. So, you need to understand much more about the consumer.

The third one is what I call the 'junk the jargon, where's the beef?'. (The marketer) doesn't want (to hear) jargon about brand salience, reach, brand recognition. He says, "to hell with that; give me sales".

Seth: Taking off from what Tariq said, 'junk the jargon, where's the beef?', is advertising sometimes compromising on an understanding because a marketer actually tells the agency what to do and what not to do? Ishan.

Ishan Raina: I think the fundamental issue somewhere is 'do we believe in research?' and the answer is yes. Having said that, I think it's an issue of are we investing right rather than are we investing enough.

The people who are best tracking trends are the people who are best anticipating them. When I saw Dil Chahta Hai I said somebody has picked on a trend of anticipating what would have been niche and said "the time is right make it mainline". He was right to make that music mainline. He said it'll sell in Lucknow. Yet, in every discotheque in Mumbai when Dil Chahta Hai plays people who would normally dance to western music would get up and dance. To my mind that is research. Actually I think this panel would have been enriched by somebody from Hindi cinema. I have great faith in these guys, great jealousy for these guys who just put Rs 20 crores and say we'll play it.

Titoo Ahluwalia: I do believe that there is a job for researchers to do which is to tell people in advertising, particularly creative people that research has changed. There is a lot of insightful work being done, which doesn't depend on questions being directed at the cortex but which tries to get to the reptilian part of the brain, which is the home of smells and sex, and emotion. I think most ordinary mortals need to have systems that will give them reasonably reliable information on a basis that they can understand. So I think the question is not whether research can play a part in obtaining consumer insights. What else can?

Pandey: I have been an immense trier of research for the last 20 years. Things kept coming up-new techniques. I've given them all a shot. You cannot actually put science to something which is about people's nuances. Maybe the new techniques will help us do that and if they do I am waiting for it.

Seth: Titoo, like a good researcher you haven't answered the question which is, has Indian advertising invested enough in understanding the Indian consumer?

Q&A "Will Research Matter?"

Some questions that the audience of 200 threw at the panel. Will tech-aided data-mining and data-warehousing undermine research? Ahluwalia: Researchers have to re-invent themselves. We have to find ways of adding value to the data that can be sourced with the help of technology. Does research really facilitate risks and how much influence does PR have on decision making? Karwal: It is all an integrated marketing communications process. You need to understand the consumer first whether it is intuitive whether it is through research it depends upon the person who is actually taking the message to the consumer. Will diversity of cultures in ad agencies help in understanding the consumer better? Ansari: In Midday we ask ourselves-do we have people in the newsroom who understand the readers intuitively. I don't know whether there is a parallel in the ad industry. But it's happening in the media.

Ahluwalia: No.

Ansari: I find it interesting that Piyush and Titoo are not debating that. There seems to be almost a tacit agreement. I think there's a number of ways to do it (understand the Indian consumer). My position is, it hasn't been done enough. Now whether you take Piyush's way of getting it done or Titoo's way of getting it done, it needs to be done. Which is more valid? I don't know. You guys are the professionals. You figure it out.

Seth: There's obviously a turf war between process and passion. The feeling is that at times the process is so over-powering that it robs advertisers of the spontaneity which they could bring to bear as an imprint on their work. On the other hand, Titoo's point, and validly so, is that unless you have the processes in place in parts where to you get your systemic checks and balances?

Raina: In Piyush's younger days and even in mine, the minute a client had a researcher we used to say, "Oh shit! Now we're in trouble."

Seth: Titoo, does research need an advertising campaign to resurrect itself in the Indian marketplace?

Ahluwalia: Yes I think it needs to ask itself a lot of questions because it has been very inward looking, it has been very number-crunching, it's been obsessed with margins of error and statistical formulations rather than what the client wants answers to. But I do believe that research can actually do something that you Suhel almost dismissed as a possibility. Frankly I think research can actually help the process of passion. That's really all I'm saying.

Karwal: I think where most of the problem lies is that the people who are going to use the research sometimes do not know what they want from it.